Last week the Finnish Government made an important decision - that all public institutions should make their data easily available in a digital form, without cost. Announcement about this in Finnish

At the moment there is a lot of information that can be given out only as paper prints, through cumbersome bureaucratic routines, often with an additional fee for the one who is asking for the info.

With this decision Finland is trying to keep up with similar efforts in many other countries. It's pretty clear that open public databases will be very valuable in future, via various applications that put this information into good use.